Description

After the defeat of the evil wizard Mondain and his mistress Minax in the previous two Ultimas, peace has returned to the land of Sorsaria. Times passes and eventually geological disruptions and a resurgence of the monster populace occur, and it is soon learned that Mondain and Minax had conceived a child named Exodus before their death. Now that child has become an adult with the power to avenge the death of his parents. Obviously, it falls upon the hero from Earth to find and stop him.

The third title in the Ultima series was the first to feature a party of adventurers instead of a single player character. The party is created at the beginning of the game by assigning various class combinations and determining the characters' attributes. The game has larger and more detailed towns, populated by NPCs the protagonist can converse with to obtain clues. Like in earlier Ultima games, exploration is divided between top-down overworld locations and first-person 3D dungeons. This installment introduces separate combat screens where player-controlled party fights multiple monsters in a turn-based tile-based system.

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Trivia

Certificate

Starting with Exodus, Origin began offering certificates, signed by Lord British, to players who completed the games.

Game Boy Color port

In 2001 Sven Carlberg made an unofficial port of Ultima III: Exodus to the Color Game Boy, featuring graphics and music largely adapted from the C64 version, fortified with an additional game following the completion of the regular game. A year later, he released its source code. For more (including free download of the playable version!) check http://gonow.to/sven/

Lord British

This is the first Ultima in which Lord British's hit points are static (you can't lower them), making him unkillable in combat. In the first two games British had a ton of health but could eventually be killed by a strong enough character. From Ultima III onward, British is unkillable by normal means.

However, he still can be killed. There's a boat in his castle behind some locked doors that can be used to sail around the moat in. Get British pissed off by wacking one of his jesters then head towards the boat and sail to the front of the city. Wait there until he shows up and cut loose on him with the ship's cannons.

PC version

There is no music in PC version, but there exist a freeware patch that adds all the music from Apple/C-64 -versions to play properly with the PC version as MIDI. There are a freeware EGA graphics patch available as well.

Most people don't know that the IBM PC port is supposed to be played on an IBM CGA with a *composite* color monitor. Using that configuration, the pink-striped borders become a solid dark blue, the white-speckled road tiles become a bright red, and the cyan trees appear as green.

Remake

An unofficial shareware remake for Macintosh of this game was created and released by Lairware, featuring improved graphics including color and detailed sprites (hair, faces, etc).

Title

The title, Exodus, is a nice irony, considering that Lord British took leave of Sierra to found his own company, Origin, during the game's development.

Awards

Computer Gaming World

November 1985 (Vol. 5.5) - Adventure Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)

March 1988 (Issue #45) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame

November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #144 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list

November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #15 Least Rewarding Ending of All Time